Hello, it's been a while.
2021 was very hard for me. I left New York in the beginning of the spring. I lived in Denver for a few months, then left in the summer for Salt Lake City (where I currently live). I joined SLUG Magazine as a music writer - SLUG Magazine is SLC's alternative music, arts, and lifestyle magazine. They've been around since 1989 and have always been a print, for free magazine. I saw Joyous Wolf play in Denver. I saw cleopatrick play on their BUMMER tour with Ready the Prince here in Salt Lake City. I bought a camera, a Canon Rebel T100, and the very next day I shot my first show - VALLEY, an alternative pop rock band from Toronto. I thrifted lots of clothes and old books (my greatest finds so far: a long, green, leopard print skirt in Denver, and a practically brand new edition from the 90's of Diana Di Prima's poetry collection, Pieces of a Song, in Salt Lake City). I drank a lot of bad coffee - discovered that instant coffee is always terrible, no matter the brand. I wrote a lot in my books and gave a couple of them away to some boys, to one of them who gave me a guitar pick (almost in return for the book) which hangs around my neck everyday.
I read 290 books, beating my record of last year of 207. I fell in love with Joan Didion's work, who died a few days ago. In Joan Didion's book, The White Album, she has an essay about The Doors, primarily focused on Jim Morrison. There's a quote about it from the Netflix documentary about Joan's life and work, The Center Will Not Hold - "I like to sit around and watch people do what they do. I don't like to ask questions. Jim Morrison, I did a piece on. Rock n' roll people are the ideal subject for me...they will just lead their lives around you."
I want this magazine to be more than what it is right now. Truthfully, I stopped writing almost entirely these past 4 months. I wrote the occasional review here & there, and a single personal blog post, but I stopped writing every day. I couldn't pick up a pen. I stopped carrying a journal with me. I lost whatever thrill writing gave me. I shut my friends out, even the ones I was closest to. I couldn't figure out why I was feeling such pain so heavy, so deep inside of me even though I had worked so hard to change my life for the better. I had a good job, a clean, quiet home, all the food I could eat & more, heat in the winter - everything I could need and want. I felt miserable.
In my pondering of why misery enshrouded my brain, I've thought long about this magazine. I've come to the conclusion that I need change. I need a new creative outlet. I struggle writing anything at all now, and so I won't be writing reviews as much as before for this magazine, I will be taking photos instead. Some will still pop up on our site, written by others, but I'm drifting away from it. It is exhausting work. I don't want to feel obligated to write about anyone's music anymore. I want to be like Joan Didion, observing, not asking the questions, just letting the music be. I want to continue to shoot concerts, but also as well musicians backstage, on tour, in studios, wherever they may be.
Music was my first love. Photography came second. And writing came last - but unfortunately it's become a passion I've burned myself out of. I want to say so much more about the musicians who make the music I love so much, say so much about the ones who have fell into my personal life and changed it for the better, but, my pen fails me. My camera hasn't.
I've always said that I wanted to tour with a band, and I still do, but now I want to tour with a band just as a photographer, not as a writer. I'll still do interviews, gig reviews, and these letters, but mainly my words will be attached to the photographs I take. I've learned that I cannot force myself to write. This magazine, I've tried to take it like a job, run it like a business. I've tried to keep a schedule, tried to write reviews to fill a quota. Tried to keep up with all the other small publications like this one, but the truth is that I don't care anymore. Wild Honey isn't like the other publications, and even though I know I could make it be like them, I don't want to. I want to create pieces, make playlists, and take photos all without pressure, and I'm sure everyone else who contributes to Wild Honey wants to as well. I want Wild Honey to be something of substance that will be not a brand, not a trend, but a collection of experiences, feelings, moments. A ongoing memoir.
I hope you'll stick around. I don't know what our content will look like this year. It might be sparingly, but each post hopefully a truer expression of creativity and love than before.
with love,
Cherri Cheetah
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